Salmon

A pleasant fantasy with a crackerjack title, "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen"is a charming film whose few attempts at seriousness are best forgotten or ignored. When Emily Blunt and Ewan McGregor are your stars, that is easy to do. Blunt and McGregor are two of the most gifted and attractive actors working today, able to play off each other with great style, and when they invest themselves in these amusing characters they bring to life the film's very contrived plot about bringing British angling to the desert of the Middle East.

The once-legendary salmon streams of the Pacific Northwest have been battling steep declines in the celebrated fish for years, and nowhere has the challenge been tougher than on the Klamath River, with salmon struggling to survive the perils of dams, drought and water wars on the river that flows from southern Oregon into California. But in a stunning reversal that state wildlife officials are at a loss to fully explain, nearly 1.6 million chinook salmon, the big, meaty fish most prized by fishermen, are expected to try to make their way into and up the river to spawn this fall.

Talk to a fisherman on the West Coast and he'll give you a hard-luck story. The once-glorious salmon runs of the Pacific Northwest are mostly shadows of what they once were, some threatened with outright extinction, and few rivers have had as many troubles as the Klamath, as it runs from southern Oregon into Northern California. Once the third-most productive salmon river system in the U.S., the Klamath last year saw only about 233,000 fall chinook - the big, meaty salmon prized by fishermen - headed back to spawn. In 2008, the number was only 68,000.

Total time: 1½ hours Servings: 8 Note: Adapted from "Party Like a Culinista" by Jill Donenfeld and Josetth Gordon, who note: "Once you've marinated the fish and put it on a baking dish, pour the extra marinade into a saucepan over medium heat for about 10 minutes to let it reduce slightly. When the fish is ready and out of the oven, ladle some extra marinade on top. " For a vegan dish, substitute tempeh or portobello mushrooms for the fish. 1/4 cup capers packed in brine 1/4 cup white miso 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons agave syrup 1/2 cup mirin 2 pounds salmon filet, pin bones removed 1. In a medium bowl, crush the drained capers with a fork.

Little twists in recipes can make a big difference, and this is a perfect example. The combination of salmon served on a bed of lentils, bacon and bitter greens is good, but what makes the dish great is a little trick Russ Parsons learned from Thomas Keller — "squeegeeing" the salmon skin with the back of a knife to thoroughly dry it out before cooking. The result is skin as crisp as a wafer and the perfect counterpoint to the fish's moist flesh. Crisp-skinned salmon with lentils, bacon and dandelion greens Total time: 1 hour, 35 minutes Servings: 6 to 8 6 to 8 salmon fillets (1½ to 2 pounds total)

Removing four hydroelectric dams and restoring habitat on Northern California's Klamath River would significantly boost the watershed's chinook salmon population and the commercial salmon catch, according to several dozen federal reports released Wednesday. The U.S. Interior Department will rely on the documents to decide whether the dams should be torn down. Removal of the structures would open upper portions of the Klamath to struggling salmon populations that have been blocked from historic spawning grounds for nearly a century.

A judge ordered a federal agency Tuesday to rewrite protections for migrating salmon that have reduced water shipments from Northern California, concluding that some of the pumping curbs were based on "equivocal or bad science. " But in a mixed ruling, U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger also said that the National Marine Fisheries Service was justified in finding that government water operations that export supplies from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta jeopardize dwindling populations of chinook salmon and several other fish on the endangered species list.

In a deep turquoise pool in a gorge of steep granite and thick Douglas fir, dozens of salmon swam fitfully. Swirling and slow, they made their way up one side of the riverbed, only to run into the steep concrete face of Elwha Dam — the formidable barrier that for nearly 100 years has cut off most of the Elwha River from the salmon that traditionally populated it. Some primordial genetic imprint makes these fish keep trying. Nurtured in hatcheries for years, supplemented by the few wild fish that managed to spawn in the limited five-mile stretch of river left below the dam, these 20-pound chinook still fling themselves up the river.

A group of Democratic Massachusetts lawmakers asked the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday to continue using its science-based approach in its approval process of biotechnology applications, intensifying the political debate over the FDA's consideration of genetically engineered salmon for food. Although Reps. Edward Markey, Barney Frank and James McGovern did not advocate for or against genetically engineered salmon, they did implore FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg to conclude the approval process.